CampNaNoWriMo: 50k Words And Winning

For the first time ever, I’ve won National Novel Writing Month. Yes, it’s July, it’s really just camp, and yes, technically the only thing I beat out was myself and the only thing I got out of this is a 90+ page document that I’m both exhausted and enthralled by, but wouldn’t really appeal to anyone else, BUT I FUCKING DID IT.

10K  /  20K  /  30K  /  40K

Let’s get the stats out of the way first:

My writing times were all over the place the last week. My mom was visiting, so I wasn’t able to devote myself to sprints like I normally would and did a lot of my writing at night instead because she conks out early. I did get a bit nostalgic, though, writing late at night in my room instead of on the couch or in my office-turned-guest-room because that’s how I used to write as a teenager: between nine and midnight, typing furiously into the silence that was my room when I should have been asleep. But I had more energy then, and I thought I was good, so the words came a bit easier. Ha.

First 10K – 426 minutes or 7 hours and 6 minutes.
Second 10k – 352 minutes or 5 hours and 52 minutes
Third 10k – 287 minutes or 4 hours and 47 minutes
Fourth 10k – 295 minutes or 4 hours and 55 minutes
Fifth 10k – 308 minutes or 5 hours and 8 minutes

I gathered a bit of steam with words 1-20k, and then averaged out the rest of the novel. I think I would have continued to improve, if only a very small amount, had my plot been better fleshed out further into the story, but as it stood I knew very specifically what the first 10ish chapters would entail down to exact scenes, then from there had a more vague idea. You can see too the “part” I worked on for the last couple days was the antagonists’ story. I intend to pepper in scenes of the baddies as the story goes, but had skipped those in favor of writing out the main narrative from beginning to end. The problem came when that narrative got a little muddy and I panicked–I didn’t have time to stop and plot, but I did have a better idea of what I wanted to go on with my antagonists, so the last about 3500 words are just evil-doers up to no good, written out of order. Also lots of birds. I don’t know, but it’s a thing; dark elves love ravens, and I don’t know if that seems cliche or not.

I have a bit of a dilemma now, largely focusing on this: the story isn’t done, and I already missed my Vacancy Season 2 self-imposed deadline. I think the wisest thing is to finish the first draft of my Camp project (its working title is She’s All Thaumaturgy by the way, I don’t think I ever mentioned, not that that will be the end title because I’m terrible with titles, and while I actually love this title it’s very unlikely it would ultimately be accepted by a publisher) because I am on a bit of a roll, and I think it’s good advice to complete the first draft and then put it away for a while. I think it would be too risky to set aside y current work with plans to come back to it just to finish up another, say 20k words later, then again sit it aside: I’ll be too tempted to edit and perhaps too removed from the story to jump back in. I do want to get back to Lorelei and co., but working on the podcast, at least, keeps me connected to those characters and their stories.

What I’ll probably do is push Vacancy‘s return to the beginning of September (the 3rd, I think). My niece is coming to visit in August for two weeks, so I don’t know what my writing time will be like then, but in the interim I think I can devote a couple days to plotting out the end of the novel, then a week or two writing it up, then I can pull out the plot for the second season of Vacancy I have sitting around here in one notebook or another, dust it off, and get a few episodes down on paper–er, uh screen–and be set up to go with that. I think??

Regardless, getting these words out felt utterly magical. I’ve never been so confident or excited about an accomplishment. Most everything else in my life I knew I would do: graduating high school and college, nailing job interviews, bleaching my hair, but this was frightening in a different way. I thought, if I couldn’t do it this time when everything else in the universe was aligned perfectly for me to write, then maybe I could never do it. Maybe the only dream I’ve had my whole life would always be just that–a dream–and I needed to let it go and focus on something possible.

But now I know it is possible. Fuck yeah.

P.S. While I was making sure I spelled Thaumaturgy correctly, I came upon this video. You’re welcome.

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